Charlotte Higgins and the New York Times Top 10 List

Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer for The Guardian, ruminates on a recent series of posts by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini to determine the top ten composers.

She poses an interesting question worthy of serious consideration.

Any list of this sort – whether it’s the “top” films or novels or poems – is of course fatuous in itself (and yes, I know the Guardian likes to run the odd list of this kind). But it[‘s] interesting in two ways: in the discussion it provokes; and as a rough-and-ready indicator of prevailing musical tastes and aesthetic fashions. What would happen if you intersected this list with knowledge of the programmmes of major east coast American orchestras over the past decade, for example?